Tag Archives: Hosting

I’m just about done (famous last words) with a long, and not just a bit tedious, migration from Slicehost to Linode. Both are “cloud-style” VPSs, where you can do immediate one-click backups, cloning, upgrading, etc. As VPSs, you get to choose a raw initial Linux stack, and you’re then on your own to add on web servers, command-line tools, etc.

While SliceHost has worked out fine, notwithstanding [the 2008 exit of its founders]((http://37signals.com/founderstories/slicehost), Linode has much better rates these days and also seems to be gaining traction with the NodeJS community. Maybe it’s the fortunate name affinity. There’s also the distinct possibility Slicehost’s parent Rackspace will close down Slicehost itself and move things over to Rackspace. They also have great support docs. In any event, I’ve really been wanting to migrate from lighty to nginx and start using CodePlane for code repo, so I was going to be stuck doing some work anyway.

A few random notes …

Setup

I don’t intend this to be a review of Linode. Suffice to say, it was a super-easy process, and the Getting Started guide made everything nice and simple. Anyone coming from a similar environment like Slicehost would have no trouble. A nice bonus is the built-in monitoring charts, basically the kind of thing you’d get from a monit install, but right there on the admin panel, with no need to install anything. They’re powered by RRD.

Another nice bonus is ipv6 support. It’s been a long time coming, but I’m finally ready for the internet of IP-labelled things and beyond! 173.255.208.243? That’s not cool. You know what’s cool? 2600:3c01::f03c:91ff:fe93:5a3e/64.

Passenger on Nginx

I’d previously used Thin on Nginx, but Passenger promised to be a lot easier. Turned out maybe not, Passenger needs a custom Nginx install. I’d already set up Nginx with apt-get, and in retrospect, I should have tried to roll it back. So there was some challenges configuring things (the default Passenger-powered nginx goes into /opt/nginx, whereas the Ubuntu one is customised for the usual suspects on ubuntu, binary in /usr/sbin, conf in /etc/, and so on).

With the custom Passenger-powered Nginx, the core Nginx config needs no passenger or ruby reference. (ie You don’t do the apache/lighttpd equivalent of declaring a dynamic modules – the lack of such things is why the custom nginx install is necessary). You only need to declare passenger in the site-specific config. For a Sinatra app, with config.ru at /path/to, you do this:

Self-explanatory I think. Along the way, I learned about nginx’s “try_files” mechanism, which fits nicely with many PHP CMSs like WordPress and Mediawiki, where a single front controller is the gateway to the entire app. You can do stuff like try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?page=$request_uri…though I didn’t need it here.

WordPress

wordPress was similarly simple:

if (!-e $request_filename) {
rewrite ^/(.+)$ /index.php?p=$1 last;
}

One quirk I discovered was I couldn’t do online changes using the SFTP facility. This happened at Slicehost too. I eventually discovered the cause. The directory needs to be owned by the webserver. The confusing thing is it looks like SFTP isn’t set up right or you have the password wrong or something. Glad to know this.

CodePlane

On a slightly separate note, I started using CodePlane as a code repo. It’s similar to GitHub’s private repo, but allows for unlimited projects. While I’d want to support GitHub, given all the value it provides, it’s not feasible to store dozens of small throwaway projects there, so CodePlane is really neat so far. And the developer is highly responsive. I noted on GetSatisfaction that the homepage doesn’t personalise if you’re logged in, he fixed it in a matter of hours. He’s also been open to engaging about some other suggestions I had. So it’s working out nicely so far.

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I’ve been thinking about what language and framework to use for my next hobby projects. There has always been a frustrating trade-off between language quality and ease of hosting. The languages I know best are: Ruby (+Rails), PHP, Java, and Javascript. So these will be my options.

What I’m looking for is a hosting environment which will scale well as I add new sites, each with their own domain and database. I want to deploy new sites almost with a single click, but realistically in an hour or less. And I don’t want to pay for each new site I deploy – in virtual hosting and cloud style, I want to be paying for overall consumption, not for the number of applications.

(Update: A couple of people suggested I should add Python, so it’s now here for completeness.)

Ruby

I say Ruby, but really I mean Ruby on Rails. The only other feasible frameworks for Ruby are Camping and Merb. The first is too simple and the second is too immature and lacking web host support.

Hosting for Rails has been a tragedy for me. I developed a site a year ago and tried to outsource deployment to Amazon EC2, and both suppliers gave up on the job. This was after I deployed it myself on SliceHost, requiring much effort, and then found it couldn’t handle the load. There are big Rails-specific hosts, EngineYard and RailsMachine, but they are very expensive and not practical for hobby projects. When I was working on Quizr, I also spent ages getting it deployed on RailsMachine; it was not turnkey as some people expect it to be. All I wanted was a server, a backup server, and a DB – so a fairly standard config. That’s not a criticism of RailsMachine, but don’t expect it to be trivial if you want more than one server (this was 18 months ago, it might be different now).

Rails is a super coding environment and would be a no-brainer for all of my projects, if only hosting was simple and reasonably priced. With a virtual environment like SliceHost, I found it takes several hours to set up a new site, and you also end up with a lot of config files to maintain (ie mucking about with apache modules and load balancing). You can also use a grid solution like Heroku. This is a fantastic way to keep things lightweight. The downside, though, is there’s always some little tasks you need that are outside the sandbox. e.g. setting up a cron job or adding some custom C library. Right now, Heroku doesn’t have a commercial model and apparently doesn’t let you use your own domain name. This rules it out for anything too serious.

I think the ideal for me would be a virtual Linux environment like SliceHost, with some VERY high level scripts that deploy a Rails app in a single click. These would have to be client-side scripts. I found Deprec is close to this and might get there at some stage.

PHP

PHP isn’t the best language, but it’s certainly easy to get something up and running. I find for small projects, it’s quite maintainable too, even without using PHP5’s OO. However, I’d like to use one of the Rails-inspired frameworks, e.g. PHP on Trax, in order to speed things up and ensure it’s easily maintained. This is where things get more tricky, because there are so many clones to choose from, and the community for each suffers as a result. As many have pointed out, Rails benefits from being the only serious contender in Ruby space, and the same cannot be said for any other server-side language. With PHP, you don’t need any framework at all, so in fact each framework is probably only used by less than 1% of PHP developers. In contrast, Rails is probably used by > 99% of Ruby programmers. Less community means less documentation, support forums, books, and information about hosting and capabilities.

Java

Well, I mostly mention this for the sake of completeness. Java’s an okay language for web development, especially if you choose your framework right, but hosting has mostly been restricted to enterprises. I find it funny, given Moore’s Law, how much Java hosting still costs in 2008, but it’s still pretty silly and not easy to just keep adding domains and applications without expense. Furthermore, I find it funny that Sun missed the boat on grid hosting for Java. So while there are consumer-focused solutions for grid hosting Rails and Javascript, no such thing for Java. On the whole, consumer-focused Java hosting is a cottage industry. Given that the language itself isn’t so brilliant, not worth the effort.

Where Java might get interesting is the VM. You could use it to host Groovy or Rails projects via JRuby. However, until it’s really, really, mature, I feel like JRuby is going to be one of those open-source things that sounds good on paper, but feels less enticing at 4am and with 26 open browser tabs pointing at pertinent blogs and support forums. I will reserve judgement for now.

Python

Python has a number of modern web frameworks, with Django being the most prominent. The fragmentation didn’t help, as compared with Ruby with its one gigantically popular framework, so it helped when Guido blessed Django. I’m sure Django (and others like TurboGears) is a good framework, maybe even better than Rails from what I hear. However, as I already know Ruby, I don’t have that much interest in taking the time to learn it – the languages and frameworks are similar enough that it wouldn’t be worth the effort. Moreover, I like the whole Ruby and Rails community and all the web presence and docs and books around it. It’s more fun and focused on the things I care about, like usability, aesthetics, and being opinionated. Also, there is simply a much greater volume of resources.

That said, Python has gained a lot of momentum due to Google App Engine, which exclusively hosts Python. But Google loves Java and I’m sure it will expand to at least support Java at some stage, if not more generic stuff like EC2. Providing a Java runtime would allow for stuff like Scala, JRuby, and Rhino.

Javascript

I consider server-side Javascript the holy grail over the next few years. I’ve explained why before – in summary, it’s the fact that you’re using the same language on both sides and the synergy that results. It’s not just that it’s simpler for you, the human programmer, who only has to speak in a single tongue. It’s more about the code you end up with. You can have a single module representing a web page, which contains both client and server code. It says “show the user two buttons. If they clicked button 1, do this; If they clicked button 2, do that”. So the code is very much combining client and server sides; and unlike high-level web-app compilation services, the code is actually what gets executed on both sides.

The main problem with server-side Javascript is immaturity. It will get interesting when we get Rails like models, the kind of stuff Steve Yegge has talked about. However, it shouldn’t be too similar to Rails; otherwise, you’d miss out on the synergetic effect described above. For now, though, server-side Javascript does suffer a lot in comparison with Rails, due to lack of a cohesive MVC model.

The main options for hosting are AppJet and Jaxer. AppJet is a nice, easy, grid solution, but doesn’t yet have enough info on commercial hosting and custom domain names. Jaxer has a lot of promise, but the Linux module will need to come out, be not too processor-intensive, and be supported by web hosts. There is also the upcoming Aptana Cloud solution, but this is similar to AppJet. For now, can’t host your own domain. These grid solutions are very handy, but I want to be able to release new apps and domains willy-nilly, and I suspect the grids, when they do become fully commercial, will impose a charge for each new app/domain.

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In the past day, I’ve pulled down all my podcast mp3 files from libsyn and updated all the posts to point to my domain instead of libsyn. Hence the major feed refresh on the blog and podcast, sorry if that hit you subscribers. (Is anyone still subscribed to the podcast?)

This is a big relief.

Having the podcasts hosted on my own domain gives me slightly more incentive to start podcasting again. Also, having PodPress installed has been a great help too. My next priority, though, is to upgrade WordPress, so I can get some modern features like auto-backup.

Libsyn has been a fine service, but really my Dreamhost account is all I really need now – given how much storage and bandwidth modern hosting accounts provide – and it’s nice to have direct file system access to all the podcasts too.

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G’Day

Welcome to Michael Mahemoff's blog, soapboxing on software and the web since 2004. I'm presently using HTML5 and the web to make podcasts easier to share, play, and discover at Player FM. I've previously worked at Google and Osmosoft, and built the Ajax Patterns wiki and corresponding book, "Ajax Design Patterns" (O'Reilly 2006).
For avoidance of doubt, I'm not a female, nor ever have been to my knowledge. The title of this blog alludes to English As She Is Spoke, a book so profoundly flawed it reminded me of the maturity of the software industry when this blog began in 2004. I believe the industry has become more sophisticated since then, particularly the importance of UX.
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